What's your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life?I suppose if we're talking technology and not product then it's the light-sensitive chip, which is the key thing that allows digital photography and film-making. It's the key thing that's brought the documentary back to the big screen. It's provided an affordable route to producing pictures of a high-enough definition for cinemas.

When was the last time you used it, and what for?It was actually doing the DVD extras for my film The Flaw – which, oddly enough, was an interview with me.

What additional features would you add if you could?I think that what's really needed is for the technology to settle down to a universal format, or codec. The systems are very proprietary so getting the pictures off the camera onto the editing system can be very fiddly, It's also important for the purposes of archive, because if you're not careful, you'll have no way of extracting the media in 10 years. I think we're some years away from that because it's still developing so fast.

Do you think it will be obsolete in 10 years' time?No, I hope that by then we will have a universal format. But no, this is definitely the future. What will be obsolete, I'm afraid, is celluloid – I don't think anyone will shoot on film for anything in 10 years' time.

What always frustrates you about technology in general?Chargers. I'm on the road a lot, and you've got the mobile phone, the laptop, the Kindle and all this stuff – and they've all got different chargers. It adds to the weight of everything I have to cart around, and I often find I've got the wrong one. So I want a universal charger – or perhaps a better battery.

Is there any particular piece of technology that you have owned and hated?I never really liked the VHS video recorder. Like everybody in TV, I could never get it to work. The main problem with that was that the tapes were never properly labelled.

If you had one tip about getting the best out of new technology, what would it be?I think you need to find someone who's already using it in the way that you intend to use it. It's better to have a person than a manual, but you need to find the right person.

Do you consider yourself to be a luddite or a nerd?I'm not a nerd, because I'm basically interested in what the technology can do rather than how it does it. I used to be a bit of a luddite, but I'm becoming less of one.

What's the most expensive piece of technology you've ever owned?Well, I suppose that would be one of the Sony HDV cameras a few years ago, which was bought by my production company.

Mac or PC, and why?My laptop is a Macbook Air, and I really love it for its hardware – the battery life and all the rest of it. But funnily enough, I bought my wife a new laptop with Windows 7, and I think in many respects that Windows now is a much better operating system. So Mac for hardware and Windows for software.

Do you still buy physical media such as CDs and DVDs, or do you download? What was your last purchase?I do both, but yes, I do still buy DVDs. For example I have a Kindle, so I download books a lot. But any book I like, I buy the physical one as well. The last DVD I bought was the box set of The Pacific, but I haven't watched it yet.

What piece of technology would you most like to own?I covet the digital Leica, but it's frightfully expensive.